Dan Froomkin has done a fantastic aggregation of the latest in the USAtty mess. Well worth a read and then some this morning, if you didn't see it yesterday. Here's a sample:

Deputy White House counsel William Kelley sent an e-mail over to Justice early in the afternoon, saying that he had "been tasked" with pulling the meeting together, and that "we have to get this group together with some folks here asap."

The meeting was held at the White House later that day. And who did Kelley mean by "some folks here"? Well, among others, Karl Rove — the White House's chief political operative, and the man who may very well have set the unprecedented dismissals in motion in the first place.

But after the coaching session, Moschella went out and told Congress that there was no significant White House involvement in the firings, as far as he knew.

Michael Isikoff writes in Newsweek: "Now some investigators are saying that Rove's attendance at the meeting shows that the president's chief political advisor may have been involved in an attempt to mislead Congress — one more reason they are demanding to see his emails and force him to testify under oath. . . .

"Although the existence of the White House meeting had been previously disclosed by the Justice Department, Rove's attendance at the strategy session was not — until both Moschella and deputy attorney general Paul McNulty talked about it in confidential testimony with congressional investigators last week. . . .

"According to McNulty's account, Rove came late to the meeting and left early. But while he was there he spoke up and echoed a point that was made by the other White House aides: The Justice Department needed to provide specific reasons why it terminated the eight prosecutors in order to rebut Democratic charges that the firings were politically motivated. The point Rove and other White House officials made is 'you all need to explain what you did and why you did it,' McNulty told the investigators.

"The problem, according to the Democratic aide, is that Rove and Kelley never told Moschella about the White House's own role in pushing to have some U.S. attorneys fired in the first place. Moschella followed the coaching by Rove and others — and made no mention of White House involvement in the firings during his March 6, 2007 testimony to House Judiciary. 'They let Moschella come up here without telling him the full story,' said the Democratic staffer."

McNulty recalled feeling disturbed and concerned when he found out days later that the White House had been involved, the congressional aide said. McNulty considered the extent of White House coordination to be "extremely problematic."

A Justice Department spokesman declined comment. A White House spokesman said the meeting wasn't unusual. "We have meetings all the time," said Tony Fratto, who declined to say who attended the March 5 meeting.

Three hours before Goodling visited his fourth-floor office, Margolis told House and Senate investigators that Sampson dropped by to say he had information Margolis needed to know, one congressional aide said.

Margolis recounted that Sampson read his e-mail exchanges with White House aides that showed the decisions on firing the prosecutors were closely coordinated with members of the president's staff, the aide said.

Margolis recalled that he was stunned to learn the extent of White House involvement in the dismissals, congressional aides said. Margolis testified that preparation for McNulty's Senate testimony — which took place more than a month before his meetings with Goodling and Sampson — was based on the assumption that the White House only became involved at the end of the firing process, the aide said.

McNulty told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 6 that the White House's only involvement was that presidential aides were informed of the decision before the U.S. attorneys were told. Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat leading the Senate investigation into the dismissals, has since said that he believes McNulty may have been misled by Sampson.

Margolis testified that Sampson didn't explain why he hadn't disclosed the consultations with White House Counsel Harriet Miers and other White House aides nor did Margolis ask him, the aide said.

Margolis testified that he believed Sampson informed him of the e-mails because the two had enjoyed a cordial relationship, the aide said. Margolis told investigators he believed Sampson felt a need to inform McNulty and Gonzales because the two had endured criticism for the firings, the aide said.

After Sampson left his office, Margolis testified that he went toward McNulty's office to inform his boss and stopped because Sampson had already gone into the room carrying the binder filled with White House e-mails, the aide said. (emphasis mine)

Hmmmm…a binder filled with White House e-mails. Firings closely coordinated with the President's staff. The mind boggles as to what has been left out of the discovery requests from Congress, doesn't it? Does Mr. Sampson still have possession of this binder? Were either McNulty or Margolis given copies? Has Gonzales seen it and, if so, why was this not disclosed fully and completely to the Senate or House Judiciary Committees?

(c) Whoever corruptly - (1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or (2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

Morning, Karl. Executive privilege does not apply where a criminal investigation is warranted. Hope you are enjoying your day. Subpoenas, anyone? And how about a criminal investigation with a side of ethical violations? Suddenly that quick resignation of Harriet Miers is making a lot more sense — you cannot be legal counsel to the White House when you are potentially implicated in a conspiracy to obstruct a Congressional investigation, now can you?

The LATimes has more. And just so this doesn't get lost somewhere in the memory ether, remember the RNC scheme in 2004 to mangle voter registration in a number of battleground states wherein a GOP-tied firm was throwing away registration for Democrats? Whatever happened to that particular prosecution? Especially in Nevada? Hold onto your hats, kids, the ride just got bumpier.

178 Responses
to “Instant Karma?”

EPU’d: I had only one question during the Republican debates: “WTF is going on here?” Tweety’s performance was even more partisan than that of Brian Williams. Glenn Greenwald has spent the last two days answering that question in detail, and today he has posted another Saturday column, a nonstandard practice for him. In doing so, he has rendered concrete the mechanisms behind the press’s so-called “liberal bias” — a recommended read.

Tonight in Montpelier, Vermont, Greg Palast announced that he received a phone call this evening from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that US Attorney replacement Timothy Griffin, Rove’s former assistant, is under investigation for election fraud.

If the Congresssional committees doing the oversight of the USA firings find enough evidence of fraud/tampering from the WH (Rove and Miers), can they request a Special Prosecutor to investigate before a Grand Jury (ie, can they start a criminal process to bring these thugs to justice)?

and then Solai said

laurie9,
That’s my question also. Can they do it without any input/obstruction from the DOJ? Or must the DOJ be involved (which means that congress would be powerless). I’m getting impatient here. So many scandals, so few repercussions. Including Congressman Cold Cash.

Margolis testified in private that he tried to console Goodling and listened to her discuss her personal life, a congressional aide said. He recalled telling a colleague that he was concerned about Goodling’s emotional state, the aide said.

OK, what about her personal life? Did she know Deborah Jeane too? Did she have a boyfriend/girlfriend? Ooh, I smell a backstory!

An ignored state that had a voter ID law passed and was upheld by the Supreme court AND had their USA fired…. ANY ties???

Prop 200 requires ID but the AZ Election Board made it very broad, Drivers license, OR two different utility bills, long list BUT they have to be in the name of the voter. This dis-enfranchises elderly women who have everything in their husband’s name AND do not drive.

The wingnut purpose of this prop was to prevent those NASTY illegals from so called HUGE voter fraud which found afterwards only ONE instance.

AZ has a real problem with Election Fraud. My own district Repug primary had the ballots seized by the FBI (*churp*) and have never heard the results of that investigation.

All this intrigue has turned me into a news junkie! We all know where this is going, I think — but getting there is half the fun! It is sad that the White House cannot see the writing on the wall and so many people are being destroyed. There has been a big game of compartmentalization going on — only certain people have known certain things, and I suspect that may include Chimpy, although that does not let him off the hook. It is time for he and his entire administration to very publicly go down in flames in a way that everyone can understand.

There are good and bad people on both sides of the political aisle, but this whole administration is just rotten to the core. It is time to move on, alright — but in a way that we are free of the despicable acts they have committed, and free to be. There has been so much polarization these last six years — I am tired, and I know that many others are, as well. Let’s pray that someone comes to their senses in DC and spills their guts in ways that there is no doubt for anyone about what has been going on.

Who is Patricia Cohen and why is she such an idiot? She has an article up at the NYT about Darwinian conservatism, an apparent attempt by a few conservatives to “introduce” Darwinism or more specifically social Darwinism into conservative politics to justify everything from their economics to their stances on family values. There are two problems with her presentation. The first is that she manages to get through the whole article with only a couple of late, glancing references to social Darwinism. This is odd because what she is describing is essentially another rehashing of social Darwinism. The second problem flows from the first. This newest avatar of social Darwinism like its forebear lacks any real basis in the science. Cohen’s only admission of this is a line that a couple of conservatives

have written that jumping from evolutionary science to moral conclusions and policy proposals is absurd.

Note that Cohen doesn’t say this is all bogus, just that some think it is. Like creationism, intelligent design, evolutionary psychology, social Darwinism, and eugenics, the crux of the matter here is that Darwinian conservatism is a pseudo-science. It wraps itself up in the aura of science but it is not science. It is a travesty of it. There is no evidence, just claims. It can not be tested, only believed.

What this gets me around to is again something briefly mentioned in the article. 3 of the current 10 Republican Presidential candidates, Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, and Tom Tancredo, do not believe in evolution. This is not just a matter of faith but public policy. How will this belief affect their positions on scientific, medical, economic, and social issues? Well, if the present Decider is any indication, it will not be a positive one. Where evidence and faith collide, it is pretty clear that faith will out. If this were a question of a single individual or private beliefs, that would be one thing but for the leader of the most powerful and technologically sophisticated country on the earth to be so guided is an invitation to disaster. And the evidence for that? Look at the last 6 years.

And back on topic, gosh I hope the emails in that binder were included in the document dump. Congress needs to have all the facts before frying some collective WH ass.

I dunno. Knowing about a binder of WH e-mails in the possession of Sampson should be enough to fry HIS a**. Which then allows the Congress to offer Sampson mechanisms to save his a** while ofering up other’s a**es for the frying.

Just like with any corrupt, Mob-related, RICO investigation, start with the small fry and build the steps to the king-pin.

If the Congresssional committees doing the oversight of the USA firings find enough evidence of fraud/tampering from the WH (Rove and Miers), can they request a Special Prosecutor to investigate before a Grand Jury (ie, can they start a criminal process to bring these thugs to justice)?

and then Solai said

laurie9,
That’s my question also. Can they do it without any input/obstruction from the DOJ? Or must the DOJ be involved (which means that congress would be powerless). I’m getting impatient here. So many scandals, so few repercussions. Including Congressman Cold Cash.

The Special Prosecutor law was allowed to lapse in the early part of this admin. At best there could be another “independent” prosecutor similar to Fitz but if so would require some serious work to wall off anyone in the current corrupt chain of command.

The facts are coming out, and the WH concealment is its own negative fact about the situation.

Republicans have 18 months to figure out a way to keep Iraq from killing them at the polls. They already have signalled they are jumping the Iraq ship by September.

The USA issue is one of pervasive corruption–interference with the Foggo/Lewis case; interference with Renzi; obstruction of Congressional investigation; politicization of the DOJ (picking up Josh’s point: would Reps have been OK with James Carville as USA in Texas in 1999, with subpoena power and ability to bring charges ahead of an election?).

The pervasiveness of the corruption means the USA story line is not neat and bumper sticker sized–yet.

When the Reps recognize they have another corruption albatross hanging around their necks with the election clock ticking, to join the Iraq albatross, they will have an interest in cleaning house too.

Who is Patricia Cohen and why is she such an idiot? She has an article up at the NYT about Darwinian conservatism, an apparent attempt by a few conservatives to “introduce” Darwinism or more specifically social Darwinism into conservative politics to justify everything from their economics to their stances on family values. There are two problems with her presentation. The first is that she manages to get through the whole article with only a couple of late, glancing references to social Darwinism. This is odd because what she is describing is essentially another rehashing of social Darwinism. The second problem flows from the first. This newest avatar of social Darwinism like its forebear lacks any real basis in the science.

Wouldn’t social intelligent design or social creationism be more intellectually consistent?

nothing new since the Friday afternoon legislator bust dump. The investigation wasn’t run from Anchorage. It was run under the supervision of Alice Fisher, whose name is cropping up in DOJ documents having to do with the bust. Here’s from the DOJ press release:

This case is being prosecuted by trial attorneys Nicholas A. Marsh and Edward P. Sullivan of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, headed by Chief William M. Welch, II, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph W. Bottini and James A. Goeke from the District of Alaska. The case is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigative Division.

Looking at the table of organization of Alice Fisher’s Criminal Division, there’s a Deputy Assistant Attorney General between Fisher and the Public Integrity group in charge of the investigation. Does anybody know who the Dep Asst AG over the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, Office of Enforcement Operations and Public Integrity Section is?

My one-line take on the timing of this is – Alice Fisher wants Gonzo’s job…

The facts are coming out, and the WH concealment is its own negative fact about the situation.

Republicans have 18 months to figure out a way to keep Iraq from killing them at the polls. They already have signalled they are jumping the Iraq ship by September.

The USA issue is one of pervasive corruption–interference with the Foggo/Lewis case; interference with Renzi; obstruction of Congressional investigation; politicization of the DOJ (picking up Josh’s point: would Reps have been OK with James Carville as USA in Texas in 1999, with subpoena power and ability to bring charges ahead of an election?).

The pervasiveness of the corruption means the USA story line is not neat and bumper sticker sized–yet.

When the Reps recognize they have another corruption albatross hanging around their necks with the election clock ticking, to join the Iraq albatross, they will have an interest in cleaning house too.

I’m hoping that one of the messages to come out of this scandal will be: As corrupt as we *thought* Republican politicians were in 2006, we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg because the Bushies were trying to cover everything up.

Margolis testified in private that he tried to console Goodling and listened to her discuss her personal life, a congressional aide said. He recalled telling a colleague that he was concerned about Goodling’s emotional state, the aide said.

OK, what about her personal life? Did she know Deborah Jeane too? Did she have a boyfriend/girlfriend? Ooh, I smell a backstory!

Yeah, I’ll bet the “emotion” was because of her personal life problem. Say…who has she been following around professionally in the last couple of years? Who thinks so much of her that she got all that power? Who would she be protecting? Who had the ability to “keep her near”? Who else knew? I have my theory.

Margolis testified in private that he tried to console Goodling and listened to her discuss her personal life, a congressional aide said. He recalled telling a colleague that he was concerned about Goodling’s emotional state, the aide said.

OK, what about her personal life? Did she know Deborah Jeane too? Did she have a boyfriend/girlfriend? Ooh, I smell a backstory!

Yeah, I’ll bet the “emotion” was because of her personal life problem. Say…who has she been following around professionally in the last couple of years? Who thinks so much of her that she got all that power? Who would she be protecting? Who had the ability to “keep her near”? Who else knew? I have my theory.

I like the direction you are heading…
What about the Regents U alumni connections and who is in power? Michele Bachmann, God’s Chosen from Minn 6th graduated from Oral Robert U Coburn the year it failed and was merged into Regents…Others?

Also worth noting is the death of an assistant U.S. Attorney in Seattle. The U.S. Attorney there who tried to investigate the killing got fired, apparently for wanting to use resources for other than the Bush priorities, i.e. investigating Democrats and vote suppression.Josh Marshall is onto this at TPM.

The facts are coming out, and the WH concealment is its own negative fact about the situation.

Republicans have 18 months to figure out a way to keep Iraq from killing them at the polls. They already have signalled they are jumping the Iraq ship by September.

The USA issue is one of pervasive corruption–interference with the Foggo/Lewis case; interference with Renzi; obstruction of Congressional investigation; politicization of the DOJ (picking up Josh’s point: would Reps have been OK with James Carville as USA in Texas in 1999, with subpoena power and ability to bring charges ahead of an election?).

The pervasiveness of the corruption means the USA story line is not neat and bumper sticker sized–yet.

When the Reps recognize they have another corruption albatross hanging around their necks with the election clock ticking, to join the Iraq albatross, they will have an interest in cleaning house too.

I forget what book I read it in, but it was said that Nixon only resigned because Wall Street titans thought that Nixon remaining in office was bad for business because he was so radioactive. Sadly, The Decider hasn’t gotten to that point yet. Sometimes I think that Smirk has been to good for business to make them want to get rid of him. Just look at the minimal amount of coverage this gets in the mainstream media.

Also worth noting is the death of an assistant U.S. Attorney in Seattle. The U.S. Attorney there who tried to investigate the killing got fired, apparently for wanting to use resources for other than the Bush priorities, i.e. investigating Democrats and vote suppression.Josh Marshall is onto this at TPM.

150. Evangelos Dimitros Soukas a convicted felon serving 8 years for tax fraud was scheduled to testify on April 12, 2007 before the Senate Finance Committee on identity theft and filing false tax returns. The Department of Justice challenged the right of the Congress to order a prisoner in federal custody to appear before it, even though this has happened numerous times in the past. A federal district judge did not agree with the DOJ and Soukas testified. The DOJ move appeared baffling, an empty assertion of Executive power, but, may have been pre-emptive to prevent more controversial prisoners from testifying in the future.

Looking back on this, I begin to wonder if this is somewhat inexplicable episode isn’t tied in with a more concerted and planned strategy by the White House (Rove) to throw roadblocks in Congressional oversight. Elements of this would be:

1) Seeking to keep some people from testifying by quiet, back channel threats as with the US attorneys (an effort that backfired)

2) Coaching of testimony (as with McNulty) even and especially when those doing the coaching know that the resulting testimony will be false

3) Refusing (as with the Soukas case above which might have been a trial balloon but certainly with Simon Dodge) to let witnesses testify before oversight committees

Also worth noting is the death of an assistant U.S. Attorney in Seattle. The U.S. Attorney there who tried to investigate the killing got fired, apparently for wanting to use resources for other than the Bush priorities, i.e. investigating Democrats and vote suppression.Josh Marshall is onto this at TPM.

Margolis cut his teeth as an organized-crime prosecutor, and he often uses mob analogies in talking about his career at the Justice Department. When asked by an incoming attorney general what his job duties entailed, Margolis responded: “I’m the department’s cleaner. I clean up messes.”

The analogy calls to mind the character of Winston Wolfe, played by Harvey Keitel in the 1994 film “Pulp Fiction.” In the movie, Wolfe is called in by mob honchos to dispose of the evidence after two foot soldiers accidentally kill a murder witness in the back of their car. But Stephen Trott, who served as Margolis’ boss in the Criminal Division during the Reagan administration, sees Margolis’ role slightly differently.

“Margolis is the guy who comes in and makes sure the brains don’t get splattered all over the car,” says Trott, who’s now a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in Boise, Idaho. “He keeps people out of those situations.”

Try Googling it. This word has been around forever, there’s a website dot com with the name and tons more devoted to it, and we’ve used it here for a long time. It would have been nice if that was clarified last night and prevented confusion. I love the word. Heh

My point is more about the irony of darwinist principles being espoused by the party that hates evolution.

But they really aren’t darwinist principles but a caricature of them. Evangelicals I doubt would ever embrace darwin even in this bast*rdized form but this is aimed more at conservatives who feel the need for a gloss of scientificality.

OT- Heading out for Cinco de Mayo w/friends. Going downtown to Olvera St., a great place for live music & good food today & every day. If you’re in the L.A. area, Olvera St. turns into a wonderful street party on Cinco de Mayo.

I miss John Lennon a lot too, but today I really miss our local talent, Richie Valens (Valenzuela). His hits have been covered by some great bands like Los Lobos & Los Lonely Boys (kick-ass W. Texas band). Ah, to hear Los Lonely Boys live today- too bad they’re in Denver right now…

150. Evangelos Dimitros Soukas a convicted felon serving 8 years for tax fraud was scheduled to testify on April 12, 2007 before the Senate Finance Committee on identity theft and filing false tax returns. The Department of Justice challenged the right of the Congress to order a prisoner in federal custody to appear before it, even though this has happened numerous times in the past. A federal district judge did not agree with the DOJ and Soukas testified. The DOJ move appeared baffling, an empty assertion of Executive power, but, may have been pre-emptive to prevent more controversial prisoners from testifying in the future.

Looking back on this, I begin to wonder if this is somewhat inexplicable episode isn’t tied in with a more concerted and planned strategy by the White House (Rove) to throw roadblocks in Congressional oversight. Elements of this would be:

1) Seeking to keep some people from testifying by quiet, back channel threats as with the US attorneys (an effort that backfired)

2) Coaching of testimony (as with McNulty) even and especially when those doing the coaching know that the resulting testimony will be false

3) Refusing (as with the Soukas case above which might have been a trial balloon but certainly with Simon Dodge) to let witnesses testify before oversight committees

OT- Heading out for Cinco de Mayo w/friends. Going downtown to Olvera St., a great place for live music & good food today & every day. If you’re in the L.A. area, Olvera St. turns into a wonderful street party on Cinco de Mayo.

I miss John Lennon a lot too, but today I really miss our local talent, Richie Valens (Valenzuela). His hits have been covered by some great bands like Los Lobos & Los Lonely Boys (kick-ass W. Texas band). Ah, to hear Los Lonely Boys live today- too bad they’re in Denver right now…

24 -
It was the Independent Counsel laws that were allowed to lapse in 1999. During the initial stages of the CIA leak, there was a push to re-enact something along those lines.

When the Indep Counsel laws lapsed, a new set of regulations were put into effect for one category of Special Prosecutor – outside Special Prosectuors.

From Schumer’s website quite awhile back, before he threw in the towel that he seems to have only recently refound:

Since the Independent Counsel statute expired in 1999, the Justice Department promulgated new regulations that allow the Attorney General to appoint a Special Counsel when there is a need to investigate a unique case involving high-ranking Executive Branch officials and/or there is a conflict of interest for the Department. (Under the Independent Counsel law, the independent counsels were appointed by a panel of federal judges upon application by the Attorney General.)

The Attorney General has total discretion over whether to appoint a Special Counsel, controls the Special Counsel’s jurisdiction, and oversees the Special Counsel’s investigation. The Special Counsel essentially has the same powers as a US Attorney, including subpoena power and the ability to convene a grand jury. If the Attorney General precludes the Special Counsel from taking any proposed actions (such as subpoenaing documents, interviewing witnesses or presenting evidence to a grand jury) he is required to report those instances to Congress after the probe has concluded.

Now, what Comey pulled off was having the CIA leak handled under a different Special Counsel approach – one where the investigation did NOT involve an outside counsel, but rather where someone inhouse at DOJ was given jurisdiction to handle a particular matter of investigation that would normally be outside their jurisdiction. Because of this, the Special Prosectur regulations for an outside counsel, which would, for example, require reports to Congress on any interference with actions, did not apply to the Fitzgerald investigation.

Also, unlike a Congressional investiation, which was also being pushed as an option at the time, information could easily be kept from Congress and from the American people and all the things like the RNC email accounts the fact that, criminal or not, Rove was sitting in the WH leaking information about CIA operative in an election year for political revenge – all would at least have had an airing of some sort before the disastrous 2004 elections.

As just about the only one who thought the in house approach in an election year was an awful thing, not really offset by having a “by the book” prosecutor (who would also be by the book about not letting Congress know anything he found out) you have to take my input with a large grain of salt I suppose. *g*

I think Fitzgerald did a remarkably good job with what he had, and I think Comey, far from being a saviour of liberty, did a remarkably good job of CYA for Ashcroft and Bush. Far better than any other result they could have hoped for. But the miles here vary so wildly that I am clearly stuck with the plodding burro while the porsches leave me in the dust. So all fwiw.

Suddenly that quick resignation of Harriet Miers is making a lot more sense — you cannot be legal counsel to the White House when you are potentially implicated in a conspiracy to obstruct a Congressional investigation, now can you?

It has always bothered me why Chimpnuts tried to ramrod her through for the Supremes too, before he had to name a man that he really wanted in there instead. With all we know now about the USA’s what better place to try to have her, who would go after a Supreme when those investigations and questions needed to be asked? Regardless of they had no plans on losing on 11/7 it would have been a hell of a new firewall with that placement and protection.

Fern 75, Yes. If she knew she was going to have to lose her job, who would she be grieving over, who would she be losing, what would be humiliating? Getting caught for something you think you did wrong personally – now that would fit, but I don’t buy the sobbing over a professional issue. She told Margolis something about her personal life – otherwise why would he mention it.

For everything I’ve heard about this story, there’s one simple thing I’ve never heard discussed anywhere. WHY should these USAs be appointed by the administration? Make them civil servants. After all, what’s happening now is no different than the spoils system that Teddy R. destroyed back before the turn of the last century. Before then every federal employee down to your local mailman got his job by political patronage, and would lose it after the changing of administrations. The fact that this abuse of the USA position never happened before shouldn’t be a reason to allow it to continue. To insulate USAs from political pressure, they should be hired the same way as any other federal employee is (should be?) hired. Political litmus tests should be outlawed, especially in interviews (they should all be taped to insure the process). The president should only be appointing the AG, and the AG can set policy. Prosecutions should never be political in nature, and this can impede the desire to use the Justice Dept. in this way.

A U.S. attorney in Seattle was singled out for dismissal in part because he clashed with senior Justice Department officials over the investigation of a federal prosecutor’s murder, and he was recommended for removal 18 months earlier than was previously known, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews.

D. Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, told congressional investigators that he believes he may have recommended former U.S. attorney John McKay’s removal in March 2005 because of conflicts with senior Justice officials over the investigation of the 2001 murder of federal prosecutor Tom Wales, according to congressional aides and Sampson’s attorney.

Tom Wales was in his home, shot thru a basement window by an assassin on Oct. 11, 2001. It’s still unsolved.

Every single time I think this can’t get worse, it does. The very idea that one reason McKay was fired for pushing the DOJ to solve the murder of one of the AUSA’s in his office makes me sick.

The death of two AUSA’s in Texas and firing 3 more all within a few months screams “big honking story!” Where is the TX media on this?

Also worth noting is the death of an assistant U.S. Attorney in Seattle. The U.S. Attorney there who tried to investigate the killing got fired, apparently for wanting to use resources for other than the Bush priorities, i.e. investigating Democrats and vote suppression.Josh Marshall is onto this at TPM.

There needs to be a special prosecutor for these things.

Bob in HI

There is also a murder of an assistant US attorney Jonathon Luna in Maryland. This was a vicious murder at a time when he was being pressured into a plea which Luna did not believe was legal. He disappeared from his office, leaving his cell phone, laptop with the plea and his glasses needed for driving. He ended up in Pennsylvania stabbed 36 times, genitally mutilated. The US attorney he worked under was DiBiagio, one of the two Comey fired.

Personal opinion, but I think Goodling was a pawn. Young, fairly sheltered and impressed with the massive power she was playing with. She was an easy target for the big boys – she would take the party position and run with it.

I’m not saying she shouldn’t be prosecuted with the full force of the law. Nobody in this abyss should get a pass on destroying our country. I just think that she’s small potatoes. I want to see the “architects” of the destruction held accountable.

There is also a murder of an assistant US attorney Jonathon Luna in Maryland. This was a vicious murder at a time when he was being pressured into a plea which Luna did not believe was legal. He disappeared from his office, leaving his cell phone, laptop with the plea and his glasses needed for driving. He ended up in Pennsylvania stabbed 36 times, genitally mutilated. The US attorney he worked under was DiBiagio, one of the two Comey fired.

I forgot about that case, thanks for putting it into perspective here.

Bil 48, I’m thinking something much closer to home. Something REALLY embarrassing and so potentially devastating that it would make her cry for 45 minutes straight, and I’m not thinking DC Madam.

…Condi?

HARRIET???

I’m thinking a more personal connection – 45 minutes of sobbing is about grief, loss, or humiliation – based on my own experience with crying jags.

Right. She’s already saved and going over to the other side with Christianists Ted Bundy and Tim McVeigh, so she’s not worried about going to Hell. And Heck, she’s got that flashy Regents Law Degree so she can always work at Jiffy-Law.
Yup, there’s a boy or girl in here somewhere, that IS a lot of crying.

Margolis testified in private that he tried to console Goodling and listened to her discuss her personal life, a congressional aide said. He recalled telling a colleague that he was concerned about Goodling’s emotional state, the aide said.

OK, what about her personal life? Did she know Deborah Jeane too? Did she have a boyfriend/girlfriend? Ooh, I smell a backstory!

LETS ADD –POOR LITTLE GOODLING — depressed and so VOCAL to a power sharing friend NOT, decided she does not want to live — so she goes dead by … suicide ? Drug of choice xantax ?? { What do I know about drugs? }

Personal opinion, but I think Goodling was a pawn. Young, fairly sheltered and impressed with the massive power she was playing with. She was an easy target for the big boys – she would take the party position and run with it.

And she knew that she was a “good Christian soldier,” doing the work of her Lord. Then suddenly an attorney explains to her that what she calls “the work of the Lord ” is in fact a felony, and a federal crime at that. It’s just so “not fair.”

egregious at 98, I will go look. Before I do, just want to add that a DA from the same area was also killed. In a strange twist, the man who has kept track of the Luna murder (500 plus page book) was contacted by Palfrey, the Madam. She was concerned about the death of a woman who taught at a college in Maryland and moonlighted for her business. This woman worked in Maryland and also ended up dead. It is said to be a suicide, but the scary thing is that the DOJ and FBI floated Luna’s death as a possible suicide… even though he was stabbed in the back and his hands were shredded from defensive wounds.

Personal opinion, but I think Goodling was a pawn. Young, fairly sheltered and impressed with the massive power she was playing with. She was an easy target for the big boys – she would take the party position and run with it.

And she knew that she was a “good Christian soldier,” doing the work of her Lord. Then suddenly an attorney explains to her that what she calls “the work of the Lord ” is in fact a felony, and a federal crime at that. It’s just so “not fair.”

To have attained the level of professional success she had at her age – I bet there wasn’t a lot of failure in her world. Now she’s outside that nice cushy world where she a major insider. Her name’s mud. Professionally, she may be wiping off tables instead of whipping out her DoJ business card. I’m sure her calls aren’t being returned from people she thought were her friends. That’s a big ol’ dose of disappointment for a golden child. There may be boy or girl problems too, but this kind of life U-turn would warrant crying jags.

Suddenly that quick resignation of Harriet Miers is making a lot more sense — you cannot be legal counsel to the White House when you are potentially implicated in a conspiracy to obstruct a Congressional investigation, now can you?

It has always bothered me why Chimpnuts tried to ramrod her through for the Supremes too, before he had to name a man that he really wanted in there instead. With all we know now about the USA’s what better place to try to have her, who would go after a Supreme when those investigations and questions needed to be asked? Regardless of they had no plans on losing on 11/7 it would have been a hell of a new firewall with that placement and protection.

Let’s look at this Wikipedia article about Abe Fortas and see what happened:

Abe Fortas (June 19, 1910–April 5, 1982) was a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice. He served in that role from October 4, 1965 until May 14, 1969, when he resigned under pressure for the acceptance of an allegedly illegal payment from a former business associate.

(snip)

Resignation

Fortas remained on the bench, but in 1969, a new scandal arose. Fortas had accepted a secret $20,000 retainer from the family foundation of Wall Street financier Louis Wolfson, a friend and former client, in January 1966. Fortas signed a contract with Wolfson’s foundation; in return for unspecified advice it was to pay Fortas $20,000 a year for the rest of Fortas’s life (and then pay his widow for the rest of her life). Wolfson was under investigation for securities violations at the time and expected that his arrangement with Fortas would help him stave off criminal charges or help him secure a presidential pardon; Fortas denied that he ever helped Wolfson. Wolfson was convicted of violating federal securities laws later that year and spent time in prison, and Fortas returned the retainer.

When Chief Justice Earl Warren was informed of the incident by the new Attorney General John N. Mitchell, he persuaded Fortas to resign to protect the reputation of the Court and avoid lengthy impeachment proceedings, which were in their preliminary stages. President Nixon eventually appointed as his replacement Harry A. Blackmun, after two previous nominations failed.

To have attained the level of professional success she had at her age – I bet there wasn’t a lot of failure in her world. Now she’s outside that nice cushy world where she a major insider. Her name’s mud. Professionally, she may be wiping off tables instead of whipping out her DoJ business card. I’m sure her calls aren’t being returned from people she thought were her friends. That’s a big ol’ dose of disappointment for a golden child. There may be boy or girl problems too, but this kind of life U-turn would warrant crying jags.

Does it make me a bad person to say that I sure hope so? And that a similar fate awaits *all* of Dubya, Karl, and all their amoral little minions?

Personally, I think the wingnut welfare machine will guarantee them all a living, so long as they keep their mouths shut and let the bodies stay buried.

Margolis testified in private that he tried to console Goodling and listened to her discuss her personal life, a congressional aide said. He recalled telling a colleague that he was concerned about Goodling’s emotional state, the aide said.

OK, what about her personal life? Did she know Deborah Jeane too? Did she have a boyfriend/girlfriend? Ooh, I smell a backstory!

LETS ADD –POOR LITTLE GOODLING — depressed and so VOCAL to a power sharing friend NOT, decided she does not want to live — so she goes dead by … suicide ? Drug of choice xantax ?? { What do I know about drugs? }

So what you’re saying is we only know that Margolis said she cried for 40 minutes, and it may not have happened at all. Right?

And back on topic, gosh I hope the emails in that binder were included in the document dump. Congress needs to have all the facts before frying some collective WH ass.

I dunno. Knowing about a binder of WH e-mails in the possession of Sampson should be enough to fry HIS a**. Which then allows the Congress to offer Sampson mechanisms to save his a** while ofering up other’s a**es for the frying.

Just like with any corrupt, Mob-related, RICO investigation, start with the small fry and build the steps to the king-pin.

I have said for years that is past time to RICO the whole GOP. They are currently indistinguishable from the Bonano crime family.

An ignored state that had a voter ID law passed and was upheld by the Supreme court AND had their USA fired…. ANY ties???

Prop 200 requires ID but the AZ Election Board made it very broad, Drivers license, OR two different utility bills, long list BUT they have to be in the name of the voter. This dis-enfranchises elderly women who have everything in their husband’s name AND do not drive.

It would also discriminate against those who were not “Heads of Households” thgat didn’t drive. I wonder how many non-drivers living in rentals where the utilities are paid for were disenfranchised; or young people still living at home who just became eligible to vote.

The requirements almost hearken back to the days when you had to be a LAND-HOLDING White male to vote.

Personal opinion, but I think Goodling was a pawn. Young, fairly sheltered and impressed with the massive power she was playing with. She was an easy target for the big boys – she would take the party position and run with it.

And she knew that she was a “good Christian soldier,” doing the work of her Lord. Then suddenly an attorney explains to her that what she calls “the work of the Lord ” is in fact a felony, and a federal crime at that. It’s just so “not fair.”

To have attained the level of professional success she had at her age – I bet there wasn’t a lot of failure in her world. Now she’s outside that nice cushy world where she a major insider. Her name’s mud. Professionally, she may be wiping off tables instead of whipping out her DoJ business card. I’m sure her calls aren’t being returned from people she thought were her friends. That’s a big ol’ dose of disappointment for a golden child. There may be boy or girl problems too, but this kind of life U-turn would warrant crying jags.

Does it make me a bad person to say that I sure hope so? And that a similar fate awaits *all* of Dubya, Karl, and all their amoral little minions?

Personally, I think the wingnut welfare machine will guarantee them all a living, so long as they keep their mouths shut and let the bodies stay buried.

What worries me is how many more of their low- or mid-level minions are out there. They should ALL be held accountable.

24 -
It was the Independent Counsel laws that were allowed to lapse in 1999. During the initial stages of the CIA leak, there was a push to re-enact something along those lines.

When the Indep Counsel laws lapsed, a new set of regulations were put into effect for one category of Special Prosecutor – outside Special Prosectuors.

From Schumer’s website quite awhile back, before he threw in the towel that he seems to have only recently refound:

Since the Independent Counsel statute expired in 1999, the Justice Department promulgated new regulations that allow the Attorney General to appoint a Special Counsel when there is a need to investigate a unique case involving high-ranking Executive Branch officials and/or there is a conflict of interest for the Department. (Under the Independent Counsel law, the independent counsels were appointed by a panel of federal judges upon application by the Attorney General.)

The Attorney General has total discretion over whether to appoint a Special Counsel, controls the Special Counsel’s jurisdiction, and oversees the Special Counsel’s investigation. The Special Counsel essentially has the same powers as a US Attorney, including subpoena power and the ability to convene a grand jury. If the Attorney General precludes the Special Counsel from taking any proposed actions (such as subpoenaing documents, interviewing witnesses or presenting evidence to a grand jury) he is required to report those instances to Congress after the probe has concluded.

Now, what Comey pulled off was having the CIA leak handled under a different Special Counsel approach – one where the investigation did NOT involve an outside counsel, but rather where someone inhouse at DOJ was given jurisdiction to handle a particular matter of investigation that would normally be outside their jurisdiction. Because of this, the Special Prosectur regulations for an outside counsel, which would, for example, require reports to Congress on any interference with actions, did not apply to the Fitzgerald investigation.

Also, unlike a Congressional investiation, which was also being pushed as an option at the time, information could easily be kept from Congress and from the American people and all the things like the RNC email accounts the fact that, criminal or not, Rove was sitting in the WH leaking information about CIA operative in an election year for political revenge – all would at least have had an airing of some sort before the disastrous 2004 elections.

As just about the only one who thought the in house approach in an election year was an awful thing, not really offset by having a “by the book” prosecutor (who would also be by the book about not letting Congress know anything he found out) you have to take my input with a large grain of salt I suppose. *g*

I think Fitzgerald did a remarkably good job with what he had, and I think Comey, far from being a saviour of liberty, did a remarkably good job of CYA for Ashcroft and Bush. Far better than any other result they could have hoped for. But the miles here vary so wildly that I am clearly stuck with the plodding burro while the porsches leave me in the dust. So all fwiw.

Thank you, Mary4!
Should the Congress be working on reviving the Independent Counsel statute?

96 – I am not that high on Comey and I’ve ended up as Mary, Mary4 and a few other variations (one other Marys becames prevelant) so probably so. LHP, who I think the world of, has a more direct personal knowledge of Comey and think the world of him. So there you go.

For evaluation purposes, the first time I saw Comey was in the Spec Counsel appointment pressers (I’m sure I saw somethings about him before then, but I wouldn’t have paid attention) and I was furious about how that was handled and how Congress rolled over, so I didn’t get my first view in an unbiased manner. The fact that my second concentrated view was the bile spewed forth(my interpretation – I guess others might call it his non-partisan justice loving, truth respecting finely honed oration)in his Padilla presser and his work with making sure people ended up with no rights or protections, disappeared into a black hole for not days, not weeks, not months, but years while praising Bush like a schoolgirl for his decisions probably didn’t help.

So while others here are enamored with the fact that he appointed Fitzgerald, I look at Higazy (where he apparently found an immaculate confession of all things), Padilla (and others) and his actions as USA, then Padilla and his actions as the face of DOJ, his solidarity with Thompson, Flanigan, Philbin etc. – the torture boys; his intervention as acting Atty General into Arar’s lawsuit, after Arar was released from the Syrian torture where Larry Thompson (now Gen Counsel for Pepsico) sent him; and his gratuitous stroking of the Haynes nomination, and I feel a bit differently.

I also enjoyed how he managed to sell that the “only” reason anyone would question Biskupic’s actions was because of the USAgate ripples in general. Yeah – right. A woman is sent before a Bush appointed Judge by a Bush appointed prosecutor right before the Bush WH driven calls to prosecute Dems and this poor middle class woman and her lawyers have to sit and listen while the Prosecutors and Judge explain to the jury that it is actually a crime to accept the lowest competent bid made on a public contract – and see, she did that, convict her (yes it was a jury trial but also yes, the Dist Ct and Prosecutors were responsible for the explanation of the law to the jury). I would weep to think that, even if there were no USAgate, a USA who sends a woman straight off to prison (notice that Libby is very free pending his appeals) in such a vicious and calculation “pre-election press” motivated atmosphere, and who gets reprimanded from the full bench of a sitting circuit with the scathing comment that they can not even tell what the theory of the case that sent this woman to jail was supposed to be —–
(ok, very rambly sentence but no time or inclination to clean it up)

anyway, suffice to say that Comey would play the game that the only reason anyone would question the actions taken in that case is bc they are getting unduly tarnihed by the USAgate is pretty revelatory to me.

IMO – he may be a bit “non-partisan” in the sense that he protects his own. Whether that involves signeing off on torture policies; singled out a specific person and sending them to overseas torture; turning over people in his own custody to be disappeared; selling ies related to that detention; clearing an inexplicable false “confession” as not having involved any abuse or coercion; etc.

I look just to a litany of very bad things and his constant association and affiliation with them and no, I don’t find a hero.

Los Lonely Boys are great. Sounds like their guitarist learned how to play from Carlos Santana.

Maybe it was Santana. (See youtube.)

Still waiting for roomies to get it together & go down to Olvera St. Yes, Harrison & Nan, I’m talking to you :).

Los Lonely Boys say they’re greatly influenced by Carlos Santana as well as Richie Valens & have toured w/Santana & Willie Nelson, among others. Last time I saw them @ the Wiltern here in L.A. we lost track of the curtain calls…an exceptional live band:

LS,
Her personal life would be her love life, I’m thinking. And if he said he was worried about her does that set her up for a certain kind of plea? Is he implying she’s a suicide risk? Or that she doesn’t know right from wrong…?

Margolis testified in private that he tried to console Goodling and listened to her discuss her personal life, a congressional aide said. He recalled telling a colleague that he was concerned about Goodling’s emotional state, the aide said.

Yeah, I’ll bet the “emotion” was because of her personal life problem. Say…who has she been following around professionally in the last couple of years? Who thinks so much of her that she got all that power? Who would she be protecting? Who had the ability to “keep her near”? Who else knew? I have my theory.

We all know where this is going, I think — but getting there is half the fun! It is sad that the White House cannot see the writing on the wall and so many people are being destroyed.

sojourner, I think this is – not sad. If these people getting bashed are part of this criminal cabal that stole two elections, took over the White House, and have proceeded to dismantle our Constitution, our integrity as a nation, to break our military, destroy our environment and to wage unjust premptive war in our name – then let them have their karmageddon. And I’m not going to have a teary moment for one of them.

And back on topic, gosh I hope the emails in that binder were included in the document dump. Congress needs to have all the facts before frying some collective WH ass.

I dunno. Knowing about a binder of WH e-mails in the possession of Sampson should be enough to fry HIS a**. Which then allows the Congress to offer Sampson mechanisms to save his a** while ofering up other’s a**es for the frying.

Just like with any corrupt, Mob-related, RICO investigation, start with the small fry and build the steps to the king-pin.

I have said for years that is past time to RICO the whole GOP. They are currently indistinguishable from the Bonano crime family.

I guess I meant “Why are there no current DeeCee photos of Monica Goodling? Why hasn’t the press staked out her house or her lawyer’s office to get a current photo?” But thanks for these revelatory picnic photos.

As regarding the other strand of the conversation: I asked Marcy if she thought that the super super secret document that just came to light, the one in which Gonsales grants Sampson and Goodling the power to hire and fire… I asked her if she thought it was possible for Sampson and Goodling to have known nothing about such document?

That document is dated a month before Goodling is hired as an assistant. She’s new. They tell her what to do and she does it.

Just asking if the document is produced because because the sh*t hit the fan. Otherwise, it might never have been produced.

Mary at 126, Thanks for answering. I kept you in mind as I’ve been looking at this stuff and I will continue to appreciate your perspective as well as LHP’s. America is dealing with some very cruel and intelligent people at the helm.

96 – I am not that high on Comey and I’ve ended up as Mary, Mary4 and a few other variations (one other Marys becames prevelant) so probably so. LHP, who I think the world of, has a more direct personal knowledge of Comey and think the world of him. So there you go.

Mary, I remember some of your very fine comments around the time of the MCA’s passage, but hadn’t seen any from you for a few months. (Maybe I wasn’t paying sufficient attention.) Anyway it’s good to see more of your comments again.

And speaking of Carlos Santana, when I was a GI in Hawaii, my mother came to visit one Christmas. She was staying down in wacki-wacki. Needing a little break to re-set the head, I took a stroll over to Kapiolani Park for the kine. Turns out, Carlos was in town and did a little jamming with the drummers there that afternoon. No guitar, just drums but how many folks can say they saw Carlos drumming on Christmas Day?

My point is more about the irony of darwinist principles being espoused by the party that hates evolution.

But they really aren’t darwinist principles but a caricature of them. Evangelicals I doubt would ever embrace darwin even in this bast*rdized form but this is aimed more at conservatives who feel the need for a gloss of scientificality.

What the evangelicals as well as these Social Darwinians never seem to comprehend is that organisms adapt to different conditions in distinctive ways…some environments necessitate agression and extreme overt selfishness (that’s the version that the anti-Darwinians love to tout), but it can also result in extremely social, cooperative and overtly altruistic organisms and groups with close-knit familial and group ties.

That’s why the biological world is so diverse. The old adage “there’s more than one way to skin a cat” comes to mind…but throw in a few other methods that don’t even require skinning the cat, or wanting to!

Conversely the “Darwinian Conservatives” also want to ignore the potential for sociality and altuism and justify their acts by their thinking that “nature justifies what we are doing”. Again, they ignore that nature is so diverse that it could “justify” just about ANYTHING.

Humans are Primates, and clearly descended from forms that survived for tens of millions of years living in social environments. Indisputedly we inherit genes that predispose us to highly social behavior in conditions where learning and adjusment to peer relations is essential. But apes, our closest relatives, have very distinctive social patterns from each other: Gibbons live in monogamous pairs; orangutans are polygynous loners; gorillas have harems; bonobos have very open sexual relationships that include homosexuality; the almost identical common chimp almost never does and has cooperative all male bands that defend territories.

Humans have spent 3-4 times as long evolving distinctive traits as bonobos and chimps have…so there is some difficulties in using any special social pattern of even our nearest relatives as a model for what humans are “naturally”. In fact, if anything we know from studies of these apes that learning is critical to what they are as Individuals.

There’s no honor among thieves. It’s like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. SOMEONE was going to keep copies for leverage either in paper form, or my original thought, on keychain thumb drives. I should be glad that I predicted this correctly but I am actually disappointed that my dismal view of human nature was right to begin with.

egregious at 98, I will go look. Before I do, just want to add that a DA from the same area was also killed. In a strange twist, the man who has kept track of the Luna murder (500 plus page book) was contacted by Palfrey, the Madam. She was concerned about the death of a woman who taught at a college in Maryland and moonlighted for her business. This woman worked in Maryland and also ended up dead. It is said to be a suicide, but the scary thing is that the DOJ and FBI floated Luna’s death as a possible suicide… even though he was stabbed in the back and his hands were shredded from defensive wounds.

The escort in Washington that committed suicide appears to be Brandy Britton, who once was a Professor at a Virginia University.

Try Googling it. This word has been around forever, there’s a website dot com with the name and tons more devoted to it, and we’ve used it here for a long time. It would have been nice if that was clarified last night and prevented confusion. I love the word. Heh

Real leadership isn’t finding out what the polls say, getting there first, and then pretending you were the leader. Leadership is dreaming great dreams, discerning noble objectives, and being willing to pay the price to see them come true.
~Senator John Ascroft

Yes, we’ll make sure you pay up Monica, how are those pounds of flesh working out for you about now. You can’t even spell his name right. Must have been this:

1995 – MESSIAH COLLEGE
Graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Speech Communications
Minors: Political Science & Chemistry

I wonder at her leaving American University, and her claim to be in the top 20% of her first year law school class there. Surely, in the non-looking glass world, a JD from AU trumps one from Regent. Was she spotted in DeeCee, selected for grooming, and guided to Regent?

Okay. I might be just a dumb old man, but wouldn’t it be interesting to find out what the fired USAs were working on. If not public record, than I’m sure Congress could get at them, and see where they would have lead, if the USA prosecuting had not been replaced with a more “politically friendly” USA. Given that it seems to me that the boy king is trying to sweep a whole bunch under the rug. I mean, you can’t be tried for corruption if the investigation is stopped as “unproductive.”
I’d sure like to see that list, and who was already indicted. And maybe a list of who was called, because I think that’s public record too.
Seems like the Boy King is trying to get an awful lot under cover.

“There’s the knave, he’s in jail, you know, and the trial doesn’t even start until next week, and, of course, the crime comes last of all.”
Lewis Carol

I wonder at her leaving American University, and her claim to be in the top 20% of her first year law school class there. Surely, in the non-looking glass world, a JD from AU trumps one from Regent. Was she spotted in DeeCee, selected for grooming, and guided to Regent?

From looking at everything in her website, she seemed (at the time at least) to be a pretty idealistic type. I don’t see her getting into anything seedy at all actually, but I can imagine that at her young age finding herself rubbing shoulders with power could have caused her to become emotionally attached to certain figures. What doesn’t jive in my mind though, is that she could have gone along with those firings in such a cold-blooded manner, unless she was mesmerized by whoever was guiding her actions in her professional life. She did write an essay on children, so I could see her being drawn to others who were on that track. Certainly, the work about saving children has been a recent theme by the DOJ king. I don’t know – it’s pretty strange.

Were she being groomed, the idealism would be required for public viewing, no? I cannot ascribe pure motives to such as her, sorry.

You could be right. It has been quite a few years, and if she thought her actions were somehow validated in her capacity as a religious warrior of some sort, it is possible that she would think that such grooming was useful for the ultimate “cause”.

There is also a murder of an assistant US attorney Jonathon Luna in Maryland. This was a vicious murder at a time when he was being pressured into a plea which Luna did not believe was legal. He disappeared from his office, leaving his cell phone, laptop with the plea and his glasses needed for driving. He ended up in Pennsylvania stabbed 36 times, genitally mutilated. The US attorney he worked under was DiBiagio, one of the two Comey fired.

I remember that news story– gruesome and, at the time, seemingly inexplicable.

Monica Geldling might credibly claim ignorance, though not innocence. Mr. Sampson, however, COS to the head of his department, Chicago U. law grad. and colleague of Liz Cheney, can claim neither. He has a file, he had meetings about its contents after having suddenly discovered that he probably should have done that rather sooner.

On discovering Mr. Sampson’s newly-found binder, like a lost book discovered on cleaning the temple, did not McNulty or Alberto or Moschella or Sampson himself have a duty to inform Congress that additional records pertinent to their investigations had been discovered and would promptly be delivered to them?

Curioser and curioser. Long past time for a criminal investigation. Perjury and obstruction charges for key aides should be among the least of the WH’s worries.

Mary 4 at 129
You go girl! (I know, trite, dated, but the way I feel reading that post.)
I’ve missed your cogent well-reasoned, well-informed, not to say, passionate posts. (maybe I just read when you’re not posting).
I agree – Comey looks pretty good compared to the rest of the crew, and I like his testimony last week, but he surely does not have clean hands. thanks.

But then, the very inception of the Bush administration involved a Hatch Act violation, when five Supreme Court justices decided to intercede in the Florida recount in 2000 and overruled the Florida Supreme Court decision to let the recount continue.

Based on the U.S. Constitution’s take on states having control over their electoral process, the Florida Supreme Court should have been the court of last resort. But it wasn’t. Five “partisan” Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court butted in to give the election to Bush, for purely “partisan” reasons.

The blood of all the 9/11 victims, the blood of all the Hurricane Katrina victims and the blood of all our soldiers killed over in Iraq along with all the Iraqs that have died IS on the hands of these five corrupt Supreme Court Justices…besides being on the hands of all the Hatch Act-violating fools in the Bush administration.

And now we learn that in addition to the five “blood-stained hands” Justices gaming the 2000 election for partisan purposes, Karl Rove and the Republican “death machine” have been gaming every election since, practicing voter fraud time and time again.

Thank God that Democrats won in November 2006. Now it is possible to hold all these corrupt Republicans accountable.

Hmmm, I wonder how Sen. Joe Lieberman’s Senate committee that he chairs is doing in holding the Bush administration accountable? Oh, right, being a DINO, Lieberman is just as corrupt as those Republicans he’s NOT investigating.

That Conservatives today are trying to revivify Social Darwinism is a parody. It is like screwing electrodes into the neck of a cobbled-together corpse and telling Eyegore to pray for lightning. It is a sure sign that they are are morally bankrupt.

“Social Darwinism” is not social, and it is not about Darwin’s explanation for the evolution of species by the natural selection of better adapted individuals. Natural selection – quick death or no procreation for the many, longer life and good sex for the few – is not about progress, just better temporary local adaptation.

“We” are here because we’ve collectively won a succession of evolutionary lotteries, like Rumpole winning his four-horse accumulator. Accepting that doesn’t require moral choices; but deciding how we get along amongst ourselves as thinking beings does.

Social Darwinism attempts to justify a social circumstance — great wealth for the few, brutal conditions for the many (eg, workers in microwave popcorn factories) — as inevitable and morally good. It is an excuse for unrestrained selfishness, used by the haves, who hope to have more, by denying the many a vote, or better laws, education, working conditions or jobs.

That’s not “natural”, simply a selfish choice that need not, ought not be made.

How many times have we heard about the USA’s that they “serve at the pleasure of the president”? What does that mean? Does it mean that only the president can fire them? I thought I read here or somewhere that is the case. If so, how can Gonzo fire them? It would have to be a White House operation to be legal, if in fact that is the case so what gives? Maybe somebody who posts here knows for sure.

Mary,Mary, quite contrary and I’m so glad you are! Good on you. I always love to read your comments.
Are we to believe that Sampson came into Margolis’s office, READ THE EMAILS TO HIM, dropped this bombshell. Samson never explains why and Margolis never asked him to explain.It sounds like Margolis thought Samson was wired for sound.Is this a supreme lack of curiosity on Margolis’s part or is there something not quite right?.

Anyone like this idea. Bear with me: Bush knew that Harriet had broken numerous federal laws with the laywer firings and probably other obstructions of justcie as well. Rather than firing her for “no apparent good reason” but to distance himself from these crimes, he nominated her for SCJ, knowing full well that she would be laughed out of the running, which she was, giving her a great reason for resignation and moving on. It gives Bush an out and allows him to continue to rid himself of bad blood. Anyone? Anyone?